Church – Peter Gowesky

Okay, so I promised that I would expound a little bit more on what I learned from Francis Chan’s challenge to the group at the Shift Conference, at Willow Creek Community Church. Well, here we go. (If you haven’t gotten a chance to watch his teaching yet, jump over here and do it now!)

I couldn’t agree with Francis more… Let’s just put it out there right now.

I was challenged… moved… and convicted. At the end of this session I was just blown away. I loved the quote that Francis said, “I believe the church needs a radical shift, I believe youth ministry needs a radical shift, I believe I need a radical shift. Every time I read the book of Acts, I don’t put it down and say, ‘Man that’s just like us.'” I laughed out loud, and winced a little on the inside. It was funny and sad at the same time. Clearly he was being sarcastic there at the end… Funny because he worded it in a humorous way. Yet at the same time, there is truth that resonates with me and it is unbelievably painful to think about. Are our churches like the book of Acts?

I love when Francis just says really simply, okay, so it’s not the same as back then, but they had the same Holy Spirit that we do! This is an incredible thought! We have the same Holy Spirit that Peter and John had, and we have the same “Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead” inside of us, why are we so complacent and frustratingly timid?

More on this tomorrow…

But here’s a question for you today… How are you and God doing? How are you the Holy Spirit and you doing? Have you put Him in a box?

hmm…

~Peter

Have you realized yet that you interact with hundreds and thousands of people a year? Dependent upon your job, you may meet and greet several thousand people a year. If you live in a neighborhood, or development. If you live in what we have commonly called a town, city, or village… likely you will run into people. And here’s the deal. People are messy. People are really dirty. They have problems. They have issues! BOY DO THEY HAVE ISSUES! Everyone has issues but me. (Ever find yourself saying that?) What do we do with all of these dirty, messy, smelly, people filled with issues when we run into them. You know, the kind that barge into your life with all kinds of problems. How do you and I handle these moments? What is it that we will do?

We have started a new teaching series here with both of our groups, Junior High & Senior High. We’re calling it “Reflect Christ”. We are looking at how Christ showed compassion on the people He found surrounding Him. There were thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of interactions that Jesus had with people. The question of a good disciple should be, when I run into people how should I interact with them? Better yet, how would my Rabbi, my discipler, my Lord, my teacher interact with this person? How can I reflect the teacher? How can I reflect Christ? We are looking at three different examples of how Christ dealt with three different groups of people. They are:

The Person I don’t know
The Person I know
The Person I know the best

What do you think compassion really is? How can we show compassion to those around us? Whoever they may be… No matter what category they fit into.

I just can’t stop thinking about this question: “How are we going to deal with those we find ourselves surrounded with?”

Thoughts?

~Peter